With the board meeting convened at 3:30 p.m. and one Republican absent, the two remaining overseers (one Republican and one Democrat) voted to prove the result.
The court-ordered surrender ended a stalemate in Cochise County that threatened to overthrow the state’s process for ascertaining the will of Arizona’s more than 2.5 million voters. The ensuing turmoil may have undermined Republicans’ anticipated victory for the House seat and the statewide campaign for school superintendent.
Democratic Secretary of State and incoming governor Katie Hobbs has moved aggressively to avoid that scenario. Her office sued the Cochise County Board of Governors on Monday. State certification set for Dec. 5 It has been.
The charges in Cochise County, also played Thursday as a federal judge, imposed sanctions on attorneys for Kari Lake and Mark Finkem, failed Republican candidates for governor and secretary of state, respectively. Taken together, these orders show that judges are downplaying attempts to politicize the role of ministers and undermine electoral administration.
U.S. District Judge John Tucci for the District of Arizona said the sanctions “will make it clear that courts will not tolerate litigation..in a democratic process.”
Lake and Finkem sued Maricopa County earlier this year to demand ballot tampering in Maricopa County, home of Phoenix, and Pima County, home of Tucson. Tuchi dismissed the lawsuit in August, ruling that Lake and Finkem made vague and unsubstantiated claims about the voting machine’s defects.
In Thursday’s new ruling, a judge ruled that sanctions in the case were appropriate to “send a message to those who may file similarly baseless lawsuits in the future.”
Tucci, who was nominated to the federal court by President Barack Obama in 2013, said Maricopa County and its attorneys “had to spend time and resources defending this frivolous lawsuit rather than preparing for it.” It is an appropriate sanction to pay attorneys’ fees to Mr. For an election in which plaintiffs’ allegations unfoundedly created a dust cloud. “
Lake and Finkem’s attorneys went unnamed in a judge’s order that ordered Maricopa County to detail their attorney’s fees within 14 days. Among the lawyers named by candidates in court filings was former Harvard Law School professor Alan Dershowitz, who once advised former President Donald Trump.
Lake, Finchem, Dershowitz and other attorneys involved in the lawsuit did not respond to requests for comment.
The lawsuit was primarily funded by MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell. Lindell told The Washington Post on Thursday night that he had not yet spoken to his lawyers about the sanctions, and said they had appealed Tutsi’s dismissal of the underlying lawsuit. He said the sanctions were unjust. “They had more experts and evidence than any other case in history,” he said. “I’m sick of what the judges are doing, including that.”
The judge sanctioned only the candidate’s attorney, not the candidate himself, but said, “The court does not consider the plaintiff to have acted properly in this matter.
“Accepting the plaintiff’s defense here does not render the plaintiff irresponsible,” he added. “This is to punish the conduct of certain attorneys, with the broader purpose of deterring similarly unsubstantiated submissions initiated by anyone, attorney or not.”
Lake, who has not acknowledged her racing, said Thursday that Trump’s 2019 campaign in Arizona was underway, according to people familiar with her activities who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the private event. She was at the Mar-a-Lago Club. It describes it as “a national movement of mothers to reclaim our culture for truth, family, liberty, and constitution.”
Tutsi’s order disrupted an already dramatic day in Arizona.
County attorney Brian McIntyre refused to represent the supervisor in this matter because he had previously advised them that their actions were illegal. tried to stop Bryan Blehm, the attorney who represented cybersecurity firm Cyber Ninjas in a haphazard audit of the 2020 election, but he refused to sue.
Tom Crosby, one of the two overseers behind the move to delay certification, told the judge to delay the proceedings until next week so that attorney Daniel McCauley, whom the commission had found, could act quickly on the case. I asked for a postponement. The judge refused to continue the proceedings, saying it was “not for justice.” McCauley did not respond to a request for comment.
The judge appears to think he should simply instruct the supervisors to approve the canvas at a meeting scheduled for Friday, giving the secretary of state’s attorneys an additional one-day holdup for next week’s certification. I asked if I would bother the state authorities in charge. Attorney Andy Gaona said Friday’s approval would be acceptable if certain conditions were met.
But the heated argument to order the board to take action that afternoon came from the lone Democrat, Anne English. She opposed Monday’s vote to delay the move of her ministers.
She warned the judge that Crosby intended to use Friday’s meeting as “some kind of skirmish between the secretary of state and the election naysayers he’s putting on the agenda.” It indicates that you are concerned about the equipment used.
Such concerns “do not constitute a reason for delaying the investigation,” the judge said when he ordered the board to convene on Thursday. It found that it “explicitly requires” the county to prove results by the 28th.
Crosby was not present when the board met later Thursday to comply with the judge’s order. He said in an email that he did not attend “on the advice of the board’s attorneys,” but did not answer other questions. I am not ashamed of myself.”
She said she felt compelled to vote to approve the results “because of the court’s ruling and because of the circumstances that are occurring in my own health and in our lives.”
However, she added, “I don’t like being threatened.”
Behind the scenes, the secretary of state issued a blunt warning to at least one other county about the consequences of refusing certification, according to emails released through a public records request.
As Republican-dominated Mojave County officials met Monday to obtain certification, Oversight Board Chairman Ron Gould said: with a felony. “
Communications from state election officials shed light on what he meant.
State election administrator Cori Rorick wrote in an email to the Board of Supervisors earlier in the day: prove criminal execution. “
Ruby Cramer contributed to this report.
